Z.ai
GLM-5.3
The open-weight coder that keeps closing the gap
What it is
Z.ai’s flagship coding model: a 1M-token context window, text-only input, reasoning always on with low/high/max effort. Same base as GLM-5.2, with the gains coming from post-training.
NLT take
The open-weight model to try first for coding: a 1M context for a fraction of Opus’s output price, and weights you can host. Text-only input is a fair trade for the price.
Before you switch
No image input at all. If your workflow screenshots a UI, this is not the model for that step.
Cost for a real task
The same task on every model: 50,000 input tokens and 10,000 output tokens, at the base tier.
Task cost
$0.11
50K input + 10K output tokens
- Input, per 1M
- $1.40
- Output, per 1M
- $4.40
- Cached input, per 1M
- $0.26
Pricing source: Z.ai pricing
Specs
- Maker
- Z.ai
- Licence
- Open weights
- Released
- August 18, 2026
- Context window
- 1,000,000 tokens
- Max output
- 128,000 tokens
- Input / output
- Text → Text
Watch it in action
Hands-on videos from creators we trust. They open on YouTube; we do not host or re-upload them.
From our coverage
Articles about this model or its family. A “Background” tag means we have not covered this exact release yet.
- BackgroundJune 23, 2026GLM-5.2: Open-Weight 1M-Context Coding Model (2026)Z.ai's GLM-5.2 is a 753B-parameter, MIT-licensed open-weight model with a usable 1M-token context. See its coding benchmarks, pricing, and how to run it.
- BackgroundApril 19, 2026GLM-5.1: The Open-Source Model That Beat GPT-5.4GLM-5.1 (April 2026): Z.ai's 754B open-weight model scored 58.4% on SWE-bench Pro, beating GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6 on real coding benchmarks.
- BackgroundMay 11, 2026Chinese Open-Weight Coding LLMs: 2026's Three-Week SweepIn 17 days, GLM-5.1, Kimi K2.6, and DeepSeek V4 shipped frontier-tier open-weight coding LLMs at a fraction of Western prices. Inside the April 2026 wave.
Sources & model links
Every number on this card traces back to one of these links. The maker page proves the positioning, the pricing page proves the rates, the Hugging Face repo proves the weights exist, and the Ollama page proves a local tag.
Official
- Z.aiVerifies: maker
- Z.ai pricingVerifies: price
- GLM-5.3 documentationVerifies: specs · licence
Open weights
- Hugging Face weightsVerifies: weights · licence
Run locally
- Run with Ollama (tag cloud)Verifies: local runThe published tag is cloud; check the library page before pulling.